( 9 reviews )
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Posted: Jul 15 2009
I bought a TeraStation Pro (TS-2.0TGL/R5) in August 2006. Jeremy at Buffalo Technology assured me that it would be compatible with the Mac operating system. I own a small graphic design studio and though that the server would stave off worries of running out of space for at least 7 years. When I received it I connected it to my LAN, but couldn't see the drive. What Jeremy didn't tell me was that it has to be configured with a Windoze PC. That was NOT compatible in my book. So I had a friend (a SAN support technician) configure it as RAID-5, and reconnected it to my LAN. It worked fine for a few months, alternately accepting and not accepting Mac files, just long enough to be out of warranty when it started really misbehaving. The server was sluggish from the day it was plugged in, accepting data when it wanted to. Now every time I try to write to it, one of the four drives "goes bad" and it starts beeping. Constantly. So I called my friend to make whatever adjustment he does, and it worked for a while. As a final blow, the network connection no longer works. The server has been off-line more that it has been on-line and now it looks to be a permanent doorstop. My purchase of the TeraStation Pro was the worst $1,800 purchase I have ever made. I feel that I was led down the wrong road by Buffalo. I will never buy another Buffalo product.
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( 1 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: May 4 2009
Bought a TeraStation Pro unit. Had problems within a couple of months - constant 15 hour long rebuilds of the RAID - during which the unit was useless. RMA process was not completed because Buffalo never sent the key to open the unit. Over time, the unit failed to write more than a few files at a time - requiring rebooting the unit - so it could not be used as a backup anymore. Finally a drive failed. Western Digital said there was no warranty because it was an OEM drive. Buffalo says the warranty was only 1 year. So I am the fool who purchased an expensive backup device that was only warranted for a year! Somehow, backup security that is only good for a year doesn't seem very comforting. And Buffalo was adamant that they were sorry I now owned a "brick" but there was nothing they could do about it. BUY SOMETHING ELSE!!!!
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Posted: Mar 15 2009
Ultimately, you'll regret making this purchase. If the device should ever fail (in our case, we had our first drive failure within the first 6 mos of purchase) you'll be forced to deal with Buffalo's HORRIBLE technical support and customer service departments. No one you'll speak to at Buffalo is empowered to provide you with real service. They cannot tell you when your replacement will ship because they have no way to communicate in real-time with the shipping dept. If you ask to speak to a manager, you'll be told that there is no manager on duty or that the person you're speaking to is the manager or that a manager can only call you back within 24-48 hours (and they never will). After we had a drive failure on our Terastation Pro, we had to wait for 3 weeks before we received a functional replacement. And this was after we ponied up the credit card authorization for an advanced replacement. I can only imagine how much worse the experience could have been had we had to send the device directly to them for repair/replacement. The first replacement they sent arrived in bad shape with one drive hanging out of the system (the drives snap into the case - it was obvious that someone at Buffalo had not reassembled the device correctly - this was no shipping accident) and once I powered it up, I discovered that 2 of the drives were actually bad. I had to call them back and ask for a replacement for my replacement. You'd think that this would inspire some sense of urgency - the fact that a customer received a bad replacement for a failed system - but it didn't. I actually had to wait longer to receive the second replacement than I did for the first one. I should also mention: when I was working with them to get the first replacement I had to call everyday to make sure they were continuing to work on getting the unit out to me. Initially, I was told that the unit would ship w/in 3 business days. After 3 business days I called to see if it had shipped; it had not. I was told that they weren't shipping anything that day because they were doing inventory. I called the next day and was told it still had not shipped because they were out of stock (and no one had any idea when they'd be back in stock). It wasn't until 4 business days later that a replacement actually shipped. And when it arrived, it was broken. If you are a small-midsize business who will rely on this device to store or backup anything that could be even remotely critical to your business, DO NOT buy this device. You will pay more for this device in the end after spending countless hours dealing with Buffalo's horrible customer and technical support departments, trying to get a replacement for any failed part. In other words: avoid Buffalo like the plague.
